The Delta Summit in Malta will be an annual event in Malta which gives the global Blockchain community an opportunity to meet for a three-day event on the sunny island of Malta. Given that Malta is leading regulating the Blockchain Industry (dubbed as the Blockchain island), matched with its 300 days a year of sun, makes it the perfect destination for this Blockchain summit.

To view my selected highlights of Day 1 of the Delta Summit, click here.

To view my selected highlights of Day 2 of the Delta Summit, click here.

Attendees of this three-day event will quickly recall a spectacular keynote presented by the impressive Dr. Hermann Hauser on day two of the Delta Summit. Dr. Hermann Hauser is best known for his work in ARM Holdings but is also the co-founder of Amadeus Capital Partners Limited and the founder of Acorn computers. On day two, Dr. Hauser spoke about the life-changing technologies which we should expect to see dramatically change our lives. Dr. Hauser points out that Blockchain may prove to be a disruptor of the finance industry.

On day three, Steve Agius, who is Chief of Information, a Visiting Senior Lecturer at University of Malta and a Board Member at Bank of Valletta plc, led a discussion with Dr. Hermann Hauser. (Steve Agius) In this fireside chat, titled Will history repeat itself? Dr. Hauser got even more personal than on the day before. Dr. Hauser went through his life experience from the years he was getting his Ph.D. to the start of his company.

Dr. Hauser recalls his Ph.D. days at King’s College at Cambridge where he was studying Physics. Dr. Hermann Hauser decided to go into business with Chris Curry, an entrepreneur from Cambridge, and Andy Hopper, from the University of Cambridge. They went to the bank across the street from his University to ask for a £10,000 loan to start Acorn Computers. Dr. Hermann recalls how easy it was to convince the banker to loan him the money. After a few months, the partners realized that £10,000 would not suffice. They went back to the bank for a further £50,000 and was quickly accepted for another loan of that amount. (Nimmo, 2017)

Only one year later, Dr. Hauser, Mr. Curry and Dr. Hopper calculated that they would need a further 1 million pounds to see their dreams become a reality. This time it was not as easy to obtain the loan. As luck would have it, a Britain banker had just come from Silicon Valley and had the opportunity to experience the projects done at Apple Computers first-hand. When seeing what Acorn Computers was proposing, he could immediately sense that it was better than what Apple was offering. Acorn Computer’s product was twice as fast, had a colour display compared to Apple’s monochrome, and offered a network connection for all devices whereas Apple did not. This facilitated the process of getting Hauser, Curry and Hopper the loan to finally get their company off the ground.

When discussing disruptions in industry, Dr. Hauser points out that Blockchain is a disrupter in the Financial industry and autonomous cars are a disruptor in the car business. The fintech industry will face many challenges and regulations and will have to revolutionize the sector. As a society, we tend to underestimate small changes and overestimate big changes and how they will affect the industry. Dr. Hauser warns banks that they will have to embrace Blockchain very quickly. He mentions that AML and KYC are very important and need to be adopted as soon as possible. In the case of AML and KYC, Artificial Intelligence can facilitate this, making adoption easy.

 

Mr. Wesley Ellul introduced the new block of keynotes and panel discussions Starting up and Ecosystems. Mr. Ellul’s passion for entrepreneurship has provided the Maltese society with several companies, the first of which was FindIt.com.mt. FindIt was founded by Wesley Ellul and his partner James Calvert. (Father for life, 2014) Mr. Ellul states that it was difficult trying to convince people when the Internet was still relatively new. He continues to state that the secret to founding a successful company is to find real-life problems and to solve them. Mr. Ellul has since founded Quizando.io which will make use of Blockchain technologies for the purposes of transparency and traceability for all users and stakeholders. Given Mr. Ellul’s background, this makes him a great choice to lead this block.

 

Dane Stangler, the Chief Policy Officer at Startup Genome, works on data assessment and improving startup ecosystem performance. (Dane Stangler) In his keynote, The startup ecosystem lifecycle, Mr. Stangler discusses the startup fever where several startups are starting up in our current era.

 

To further the discussion on startups and the startup ecosystem, Alistair Farrugia was appointed as the moderator of the panel discussion with speakers, Dane Stangler, Rafael Pascual Leone and Mikko Puhakka on a global perspective on startup ecosystems.

 

 

 

 

 

An interesting panel discussion for those interested in launching a business in Malta was led by Wesley Ellul. Invited to take part in a discussion on launching in Malta were Alex Borg, Karl Harrera, and Ivan Filletti. Alex Borg is an Accelerator manager, strategist and mentor at MITA. Karl Herrera is the Chief Officer Incentive Manager at Malta Enterprise and Ivan Filletti is the Head of Operations and Business Development at the Gaming Malta Foundation.

 

 

 

 

It was discussed that the government should stay out of the way so as not to hinder innovation. The speakers encouraged the audience by stating that most people believe that you must make it by 25 or else it’s too late and that this is a myth. In reality, most successful businesses are started by people who are over 40 years old. The typical most successful age range is actually 40-43 years of age.

Another misconception is that a startup would need to worry about regulations before launching their business idea. In reality, it is recommended that a company gets started and when ready to launch, they approach Business First to discuss regulations. Business First aims to be a one-stop shop for those starting businesses. They offer all the services needed to get started.

To continue explaining to the audience what it takes to start a business, they state that a business plan is a must. A company must have a full understanding of what their business idea is before approaching Business First. A business plan does not necessarily need to be written down. Business First organizes several Information sessions for entrepreneurs. Several Business Enhance schemes are offered to successful candidates. Anyone interested in starting a business is invited to visit the Business First website here or set up an appointment to speak to them in person.

 

An interesting panel discussion was held in the Exhibition area. The moderator was Dr. Alex Grech, a Managing Partner at StrategyWorks. StrategyWorks is a company which provides research, advisory services, and project management, specializing in disruptions in industry caused by new technologies. (StrategyWorks) Prior to introducing the panelists on stage, Dr. Grech tells the audience how he first got interested into Blockchain. In 2015, a friend told him he should look into Blockchain for Education and that is where it all began for him. Since then, Dr. Grech has co-Authored the study “Blockchain in Education”.

Joining him on the stage are Dr. Larry Sanger, Anthony F. Camilleri, Natalie Smolenski, Dr. Joshua Broggi and Dr. Joshua Ellul. Dr. Sanger is the Co-Founder of Wikipedia and CIO of Everipedia. Mr. Camilleri is a Standardization Expert and Co-Author of the study “Blockchain in Education”. Ms. Smolenski is the VP Business Development at Learning Machine. Finally, we have Dr. Broggi who is the founder of Woolf University and Dr. Ellul who is the Director of the Centre for Distributed Ledger Technologies at the University of Malta.

 

 

 

 

 

In their interesting panel discussion, Blockchain and EDTECH, the panelists had the opportunity to discuss the impact of blockchain in the education sector. There are several cases where Blockchain can bring about opportunities for monetizing educational data, facilitating education, and allowing data to be accessed by all people.

Dr. Broggi brought up several interesting points about applying for University and how University submissions should be automated. Blockchain and zero-knowledge can be used for University submissions. Zero-knowledge proofs (read more about these here) can be used for University submissions where administration only can view the data they need to see about the applicants.

Woolf University believes that there is a need to capture data at a very low level. Every time a submission or a lesson happens, the University must mark down that these events have happened. The Blockchain can record the entire student’s progress.

In his introduction, Dr. Ellul expressed the University of Malta’s aim in bridging the gap between the legal, financial, IT and business world when dealing with Blockchain technologies. Dr. Ellul notes that there is a lot of misinformation about Blockchain and a lot of people who are spreading this incorrect information about what Blockchain is about. Thus, a new Masters course at the University of Malta will commence in 2019 regarding Blockchain and DLT. This would prove to be an opportunity for people from different disciplinaries to come together and learn how Blockchain may be used.

Dr. Ellul, introduced the notion that although many people may be concerned that this technology is being regulated (on a voluntary basis), there may be a time when technology will be regulation. What is vital, is to gain an understanding on which data should be stored on a DLT. Dr. Ellul also questioned whether all DLTs need to be immutable.

Dr. Sanger is also an advisor on a project known as Teacher which works on decentralizing education. He recalls that other attempts to decentralize education had not hit off because it was difficult to gain the people’s trust about the credibility. With the use of Blockchain, giving full transparency, this would credit the possibility of gaining the user’s trust and the course’s credibility.

When asked about the right to be forgotten, Dr. Sanger said that this is one of Blockchain’s advantages, that this puts the power from a centralized entity, back to the user. Dr. Broggi believes that there needs to be a balance between user privacy and not concealing user data. This provides a challenge in the aspects of user protection and the right to be forgotten.

Ms. Smolenski reiterated that facts can be verified in a binary manner (true or false) and this would prove to have a great opportunity. Continuing on Dr. Broggi’s discussion where he discussed University submissions, Ms. Smolenski spoke about Millennials and their challenges with taking a snapchat of their application and not understanding why this does not constitute of valid proof of certain qualifications. They believe that they have earned it so they should own it. However, due to the ease of falsifying documents, there is not enough proof of these documents online. Blockchain’s immutability could be the solution for this.

Mr. Camilleri’s role is to convince policymakers the role of Blockchain technologies in Education. The average employer spends an average of 15 minutes on an applicant’s CV. Mr. Camilleri stated that our academic achievements are a mixture of what we learnt and who taught us. This would raise a potential use for Blockchain technologies which can verify who is actually accredited.

One of Mr. Camilleri’s concerns is that if we use an algorithm to verify who is an eligible applicant for a University course or a great candidate for applying for a job, would we be over-automating the process. Dr. Broggi said that the reasons for introducing the level of automation would be purely for reducing bureaucracy and costs where one-to-one interviews would still take place.

 

At the Innovation Stage, David Schranz gave an interesting talk in his keynote, The next step in property management. Mr. Schranz is the CEO at Ledger Projects Ltd and the founder of Dakar Software Systems. Ledger Projects Ltd is a group of professionals who believe that distributed ledger technology will change the way transactions and contracts are handled.

In his keynote, Mr. Schranz discussed property management and how Blockchain would aid in this. Mr. Schranz stated that as of present, there is a loophole in how contracts are done in Malta. A person in Malta may sell their property multiple times before the legal documents are input into the system (which usually takes a while). This is known as double spending and Blockchain has found a way to eliminate the risk of double spending.

This is not a problem of Malta alone, but a problem found all around the world. This is also particularly found in countries where natural disasters hit. Often, when people’s houses are destroyed, the owners of the land are forced to camp on their property to claim that it is theirs. With the case of Blockchain technologies, geo-fencing can be published directly onto the Blockchain without the need for people to camp there.

Apart from this obvious advantage, we could also see the full digitization of property. Given the transparency and immutability of Blockchain technologies, people would be able to view the entire property history. Blockchain technologies may provide the infrastructure which is needed in the Property Management industry. (Blockchain technology as a platform for digitization)

The three-day Delta Summit event in Malta could see some obvious improvements in registration times and some sound issues which we will be looking forward to seeing in next year’s Delta Summit event. The high-profile list of speakers present at the event definitely made the summit stand out and be more than worth the ticket-price.

 

References

Blockchain technology as a platform for digitization. (n.d.). Retrieved from EY: https://www.ey.com/publication/vwluassets/ey-blockchain-technology-as-a-platform-for-digitization/$file/ey-blockchain-technology-as-a-platform-for-digitization.pdf

Dane Stangler. (n.d.). Retrieved from LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dane-stangler/

Father for life. (2014, February 16). Retrieved from Times of Malta: https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140216/life-features/Father-for-life.507209

Nimmo, J. (2017, April 21). Hermann Hauser: The ARM founder who says Apple will be a ‘niche player’ within a decade. Retrieved from Standard: https://www.standard.co.uk/business/hermann-hauser-the-arm-founder-who-says-apple-will-be-a-niche-player-within-a-decade-a3520121.html

Steve Agius. (n.d.). Retrieved from LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveagius/?originalSubdomain=mt

StrategyWorks. (n.d.). Retrieved from StrategyWorks: http://www.strategyworks.net/